


might not feel this good again

by Addison R (beyond_belief)



Category: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
Genre: Light Dom/sub, M/M, Under-negotiated Kink, Yuletide Treat, idiots who don't know what they're doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21880351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Addison%20R
Summary: Five times Cliff did things for Rick.
Relationships: Cliff Booth/Rick Dalton
Comments: 9
Kudos: 103
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	might not feel this good again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plastics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, plastics! I saw your prompt about sub!Cliff and couldn't stop thinking about it.

"I should get someone out here to clean the pool one of these days," Rick says, breaking from practicing his lines to make himself a drink. "Buncha leaves and twigs and shit in there."

Cliff looks up from the novel he's reading, stretched out on the sofa with his moccasins resting by the heels on one arm. "Oh, I can do it."

"You sure?" Rick puts the stopper back in the decanter of whiskey. He already has a lady who comes to clean the house once a week, a matronly woman who reminds him a little of his aunt on his mother's side, except Dolores always wears a scarf over her hair, and his aunt always seemed to have her hair in rollers. He probably knows someone who can recommend someone to clean the pool. "I can hire somebody."

"Nah, I got it." Cliff tosses the slim paperback on the coffee table and swings his legs off the cushions.

Rick didn't mean _right now_. "There ain't no hurry, pal."

"I'm bored with this book anyway," Cliff says. 

He starts to walk towards the door, and Rick says, "Wait, you can borrow some swim trunks or somethin' if you want, so you don't get your own clothes all wet. Go and get it from the bedroom."

"Thanks." 

He's busy with his lines when Cliff goes out to the pool, so Rick doesn't see what he's doing until he takes a break half an hour later, another scene under his belt. He opens the door to ask Cliff if he wants something to drink and sees Cliff swirling the net through the water, wearing only Rick's smallest pair of swim trunks. Rick blinks as though the sun's shining in his eyes; he knew Cliff was in good shape but now he feels a little ashamed to think he can stand next to the man. And Cliff's tan; every inch of skin that Rick can see, at least. 

Cliff looks up. "Hey."

"You really didn't - didn't need to - to offer," Rick says, caught so off-guard by the scene in front of him that he trips over all the words. 

"Might as well be doing something," Cliff replies. He swirls the net around again, frowns down at whatever's in the water, then flicks the whole thing up over his shoulder. Rick watches as water-logged twigs go flying over the fence. "This was the first pair of trunks I saw in the drawer, so I hope you don't mind."

Rick shakes his head. Cliff sets the net aside and gets down on the edge with a brush he probably dug out of the tool shed, and starts scrubbing at something. Rick feels like his eyes are crossing. 

"Well, hell, if I'd know this is what you cleaning the pool would entail, I'd have asked you to do it years ago," he says, not even thinking about what words are coming out of his mouth. 

Cliff looks up, grins widely, and sits back on his heels. The movement does nothing more than illustrate how little of his skin is covered by the stupid paisley-print trunks. Rick should go back inside, go back to practicing his lines. Not stand here and watch Cliff's shoulder muscles move as he scrubs tree sap or whatever it is from the concrete, looking as though he knows exactly what Rick is thinking and isn't bothered by it in the slightest.

"I'll, uh..." Rick feels his face heating up, among other things. "Let you get back to it, yeah."

*

_Exterior, afternoon:_

"Shit, there's bird shit all over that window," Rick mutters, stilling in the act of taking out his house key, frowning at the front window. "That's gonna bother me all night now, having to see that."

"I got it," Cliff says patiently from behind him, as thought he'd always been planning to stay and not head home to sleep. They've both been up since four; today's filming started early, and Rick knows if he's bone-tired after spending most of the time on horseback, Cliff is also tired. "Unlock the door so I can get back to the shed."

"Nah, I'll close the curtain for now, it's not -"

"I said, I got it," Cliff repeats, raising his eyebrows above the lenses of his sunglasses. 

"Well, all right." Rick unlocks the door. "As long as you don't mind."

"I don't mind," Cliff says, and he's chuckling, squeezing his hand warmly on Rick's shoulder. 

It's been a few weeks since the Pool Thing, as Rick thinks of it to himself, complete with stress to the words. Cliff hasn't offered to do any chores or walked around in a minimal amount of clothing since, although he's changed a few light bulbs in various places in the house without Rick even mentioning it. 

He stands in the kitchen looking at what's in the cupboards while Cliff does whatever he's doing in the tool shed, then says absently, "Remind me to leave some cash for Dolores to go to the store," when Cliff comes back through carrying a bucket.

"Rick, don't forget to leave Dolores the grocery money," Cliff says, nudging him out of the way of the sink with an elbow.

"Yes, very funny."

Cliff turns on the tap and they both watch water start to fill the bucket. "You want me to run get you something?" Cliff asks, and points at the cupboards when Rick looks at him in confusion.

"Nah, nah, I can get by for the night."

"Canned soup and crackers, the life of a television star," Cliff jokes. He turns the tap off and hefts the bucket from the sink, setting it down on the linoleum floor. Then he reaches a hand behind his head and pulls his t-shirt up and off in one smooth motion. "All right, I'll be outside."

"Uh-huh," Rick manages, because he's suddenly parched. He gets himself a beer.

He can see directly out the window when Cliff starts washing, squeezing out a sponge against the glass so that soapy water runs down. It's a good view - too good of a view, because even as he watches Cliff stretch up to get the top of the window where there isn't even any bird shit, he's sure Cliff can see him standing there in the living room. Canned soup, right, he was thinking about dinner. 

Instead he opens the front door and leans out. "May as well get the other windows while you've got that bucket and everything," he says, not really because the other windows look dirty, but to see what Cliff will say. 

"I can do that." Cliff takes his lighter and pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, tucks one in the corner of his mouth. The movement of lighting it makes him hunch a little, his stomach muscles tightening. Rick pretends he's looking somewhere else for at least a few seconds. Cliff takes a long drag, then makes a face. "God, these are awful."

"Stop buyin' 'em, then."

"Yeah."

*

"You mind washing the car for me tonight?" Rick asks, one day when they wrapped before sundown and Cliff drove him home.

Cliff looks at the gleaming Cadillac, which has only a few specks of road dust on it and doesn't need to be washed today, or even this week. He draws a finger along the paint, then looks at Rick. "Don't mind at all."

"I think the soap's under the kitchen sink, not out in the shed." 

Rick changes into jeans, then makes himself a drink while Cliff fills a bucket with water and the soap, fishing some rags off the pile Dolores stacks up in the under-sink cabinet. Then he takes his glass out to the front step and sits down. "I'll sit here so we can talk," he says.

"Sounds good to me." Cliff peels his shirt off and tosses it next to Rick on the concrete.

Rick stretches his legs out along the sidewalk and leans against the post, takes a sip of his drink. He watches Cliff crouch down at the front of the Cadillac and start scrubbing with the soapy rag. Water runs down his arms and drips down onto his jeans. "That tattoo hurt when you got it?" he asks.

"What, this one on my arm?" Cliff glances at it, like he's reminding himself what's even there. "Barely even remember it, really. I was probably drunk." He swirls the rag over the headlights. "Hell, forget probably. I was most certainly drunk."

Rick smiles against the rim of his glass. "That make it easier or harder to hold still?"

"Good question." Cliff pauses, like he's giving it some thought, and Rick has a sudden mental image of Cliff keeping himself perfectly still for whoever the tattooist had been, likely some Army buddy, so boozed up it was an effort not to sway side to side. It turns into the image of Cliff, unmoving, as Rick approaches. Cliff, unresisting, as Rick pushes him down. Pushes him down to what, Rick's not entirely sure, but just the thought of pushing Cliff anywhere and having him fold makes heat rise in his chest and up his throat. 

He presses the cold glass to his neck and takes a deep breath.

In the driveway, Cliff's stood up, and is stretching over the hood of the car. "Christ," Rick mutters under his breath, caught between an unexpected arousal and that something else feeling that's still gripping at his shoulders, the shame of suddenly wanting to _make_ Cliff wash the Caddy, to push him against the sun-warmed metal as he scrubs the rag over it. 

Rick closes his eyes. Then he tips most of what's left of his drink down his throat.

*

"Grab me a beer, Cliff," he says, the next time they're sitting around the living room, sharing a pizza and watching that week's _Bounty Law_.

Cliff rolls off the couch and gets them each a beer from the refrigerator. 

"Put my plate in the sink, here," he says a little later, and Cliff does. Rick nudges the empty pizza box closed with his heel, watches Cliff run water over the plates for a minute before he comes back into the room for _The Andy Williams Show_. 

"What time do we have to be on set tomorrow?" Rick asks, turning his attention back to the screen.

"Eight."

That's a whole ten hours from now. He can get comfortably drunk, and still get some sleep. He looks over at Cliff, who's stretched out the entire length of the couch again but is already looking back at him. Rick feels the flush come up his neck and into his cheeks. Heart tripping, he holds Cliff's gaze and moves his foot over. Says, "Take my shoes off for me."

"Did you want me to take my shirt off while I do it?" Cliff asks with a lazy grin. Rick shrugs, waves the words off as a joke while trying to look more casual than he feels. Cliff stretches his arm over and pulls Rick's Oxfords from his feet, going gently from the heel. He sets the shoes on the floor.

"Anything else?"

Rick wiggles his toes in his socks. "No, I'm good."

*

_Interior, morning:_

Cliff's still asleep on the bigger couch when Rick stumbles hungover from his bedroom, visible as one arm and one leg hanging off the side as Rick goes past into the kitchen, intending to make and drink at least ten cups of coffee. Maybe more. Also intending to put his face in the freezer for a full minute. God, he needs to not drink quite so much, even if he doesn't have to be on set today. 

Holding an ice cube underneath his eyes for a few seconds on each side works well enough, but then his hands are wet and he slips pouring out the old coffee, splashing some on the floor. "Fuck," he mutters. Then he drops grounds on the floor trying to clean the percolator basket out into the garbage bin. "Goddamn it."

He bangs the cupboard door louder than he intends to getting out the can of Maxwell House, but manages to get the percolator reassembled and plugged in without dropping anything else. Then he holds another piece of ice underneath his eyes. 

"What," Cliff says, while Rick's eyes are closed - he hadn't even realized Cliff was awake. He blinks and tosses the melting ice into the sink.

"Spilled goddamn grounds on the floor." He looks at the mess, then at Cliff, standing in the living room. "Clean it up for me."

Cliff stifles a yawn, then ambles into the kitchen, barefoot and shirtless. Yesterday's Levis ride low on his hips. He looks warm. There's a line on his cheek from the pillow and his hair is sticking up on the same side. 

He looks down at the wet grounds, then at the old coffee splashed on the linoleum. "Well," he murmurs. "Do I get coffee after, or am I making that, too?"

Rick points at the electric pot, which is just starting to come to a boil, then at the floor. His heart's in his throat. Whatever _this_ is, it's more than likely written all over his face, even as he tries to control it. 

Cliff takes the towel from the rack and drops carefully to his knees. Rick sucks in a breath, and from Cliff's quick glance up, knows it was audible. "You know I like it when you ask me do stuff around the house," Cliff says. The words are quiet. He presses the towel to the pool of stale coffee. 

Rick feels like his eyes are burning again despite the ice. "There's a difference between me askin' you to do it and, and just tellin' you to do whatever - whatever it is."

"I don't see that there's a difference," Cliff replies, and flips the towel over to use the other side. 

Rick looks at the line of his back, the messy scar over his shoulderblade. "You sure about that?"

"I am."

Rick lifts his foot and sets it gently on the back of Cliff's neck. Then he pushes. 

Cliff drops gracefully - Rick's never known him to be anything but, a thought that somehow rises above the clamor of everything in his head at the moment - one hand sliding under his face so that it's not entirely pressed to the floor, Rick doesn't move his foot, watching the rise and fall of Cliff's back as he breathes. 

"I like doing what you tell me to," Cliff says into the heavy silence, unmoving, still half-naked with the scent of fresh coffee in the air. 

"Get up," Rick says quietly, setting his foot back on the cool linoleum.

Cliff gets to his knees and leans against Rick's legs. The warmth of his body seeps through Rick's pyjamas. "This ain't how I thought this morning would go," Rick says, and Cliff laughs. Rick slides his hand 'round the back of Cliff's neck and squeezes gently. Cliff's hair is silky under his thumb. "All right, all right, get up. I need a cigarette. Worry about the floor later."

Cliff stands up. Cliff takes the lighter from his hand and lights the cigarette Rick tucks in his lip, then does his own. They lean against the counter to smoke. "You got lines to work on today?"

"Don't I always?"

"I like that about you, man, you practice. The last thing I worked on before this one, they finally held up a chalkboard for one of the actors to read off. That guy couldn't memorize shit." Cliff shakes his head and exhales a long stream of smoke.

Rick nods. "Known a few like that." 

Cliff's close enough that his bare arm is resting against Rick's. Rick uncurls his free hand so that the back of it is pressed against the back of Cliff's. "You know, you don't seem like the sort who'd take too kindly to another man putting his foot on his neck," he says after a moment.

"Yeah, don't think I'd let just anyone do that." 

Rick looks at the percolator but doesn't move to get a cup, then asks, "You got plans for today?" 

Cliff's fingers slide along his. "Whatever you might like me to do."


End file.
